Statinators spill the beans
Oftentimes people become so fixed in their thinking – and in their belief that everyone else thinks the same way – that they unwittingly raise the curtain and expose the wizard of their flawed thinking, showing it for what it really is. Statinators have done just that in an article in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).
The study, Effects of High-Dose Modified-Release Nicotinic Acid on Atherosclerosis and Vascular Function, compares the increase in carotid artery plaque over a 12-month period in subjects taking niacin versus those taking a placebo. It turns out that those subjects taking the niacin experienced a shrinkage of their plaque whereas plaque grew larger on those taking the placebo. The revealing hitch in this study is that both groups were on statins, which means the group on statins alone was the placebo group. Therefore the data from this study shows that statins alone do not reverse the growth of plaque (at least not plaque in the carotid arteries) despite lowering LDL levels. Taking the logic a little further, the data from this study gives weight to the idea that a lowered LDL doesn’t reduce plaque growth.
There is a lot we can glean from this study and the from the authors’ commentary on it.
You can see me in the photo at the left kneeling by a headstone in a forlorn, weed-infested graveyard in a bad part of Dallas, Texas. The remains below that headstone are none other than those of Clyde Barrow, the male half of the notorious duo who ravaged the the southern states in the late 1920s/ early 1930s, and who were made famous to our generation by the hit movie
In June 1933 ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd and Adam Richetti (shown at right) stopped off to get their stolen car fixed at Bitzer Chevrolet where Richetti’s brother, Joe, worked as a mechanic. As they were cooling their heels there, the Polk County Sheriff who lived in Bolivar, William Killingsworth, wandered in. My dad didn’t know if he just happened in or if he had heard the gangsters might be there. I suspect the former since he didn’t come in with guns drawn. Floyd and Richetti took him captive at gun point, took Joe’s car and lit out for Kansas City. Along the way they ditched Joe’s car, stole another vehicle, switched their hostages (they had collected another along the way) over, and kept on traveling. Before they reached Kansas City, they let Killingsworth and the other hostage go by the side of the road, and drove off. They reached Kansas City, and there was where the story went murky.

